


Hello Time Bomb

by tawg



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: #coulsonlives, Coulsmash - Freeform, M/M, Phil Coulson is very good at not dying, Post-Movie, Power Dynamics, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-25
Updated: 2012-08-25
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:36:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tawg/pseuds/tawg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce doesn’t like Agent Coulson or the things he represents. Doesn’t like him or respect him or trust him. Phil doesn’t need him to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hello Time Bomb

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mikey (mikes_grrl)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikes_grrl/gifts).



Bruce is getting ready to run.

He doesn’t have a bag packed, that would be a wasted effort. It takes too much time and too much risk to retrieve such things. He has an escape route planned though. Right down South and through the border. He keeps an eye on the news, on the people he could be helping. Tony tells him that he is helping people, staying in New York, playing in those beautiful labs.

Bruce smiles, and doesn’t argue, and hopes that Tony will one day understand that science with the best intentions only causes more pain. Only creates more monsters.

This is a holiday from normality for him. Clean clothes. A familiar bed. Agents watching him from the sunlight instead of lurking in the shadows. 

A New York summer and Agent Coulson, the latest of SHIELD’s Lazarus kin, watching from behind the black sunglasses of men who have too many things to hide.

Watching Bruce closely, because for all that Tony talks about freedom and rights, Bruce knows that the world is governed by allowances. 

“He likes you. He fought to get Blonsky out of the way and you on the team.”

A lesser of two evils, and Bruce wonders if it will stay that way, what will happen if the status quo between beast and abomination shifts.

Bruce’s strength is that people overestimate him. They overestimate the value of his academia, the power of his rage. People look at Bruce Banner and somehow fail to see that he is getting old, and that he is already tired, and that the paranoid posturing is wearing thin. He pushes boundaries, constantly presses against them so that no one forgets that he can burst through.

Agent Coulson’s strength is that everyone underestimates him. He makes himself small and forgettable, and he is deadly only when eyes aren’t on him. Agent Coulson watches Bruce from the sidelines, keeps track of an asset and a liability with eyes of black glass and Bruce is torn between the conflicting survival instincts of fight or flight.

He doubts they’ll send Natasha a second time.

He wonders if he’ll even make it out of the agent’s line of sight.

Phil Coulson with his perfect suits and his smell of coffee and his unwavering stare and his calm voice and a million other things that the Hulk could crush between his fingers. Would Coulson return from that? Does SHIELD value him enough to scrape up the paste and return his form? Would that be the incentive Fury would need to hunt the Hulk down and end the threat SHIELD pretends is a friend?

Phil Coulson with the way he walks too quietly and stands too still, and Bruce does not need this tonight. Does not need to be thrumming with too much energy, with the foreign sensation of not running on empty for the first time in years. To not be running.

“Am I up past my bedtime?” Bruce asks without looking up. He doesn’t need to see to trace the shape of Agent Coulson moving through the room. He can feel the weight of observation heavy against his skin. Agent Coulson handing him clothes when he wakes up naked and dusty. Agent Coulson standing guard while medical professionals that Bruce does not trust at all check him over. Agent Coulson walking behind Bruce in corridors, a polite shadow merely studying Bruce’s back for the perfect place to slide a knife.

Coulson is an expert at such things.

“I wasn’t aware you had one,” Coulson replies evenly. “Though I’d be happy to add one to your file.”

Bruce cringes and roils and snarls, and looks up at Coulson with a sweet smile that speaks of silent laughter and covers the bluntness of teeth that can grind bones to dust. But Coulson never looks at Bruce’s smile, and blue eyes meet brown and the resulting reaction is green green green.

“Well,” he replies lightly, “I’d hate for your files to be anything less than complete.” 

There’s a crinkle at the corner of Coulson’s eyes, nowhere close to a smile but still a sign of amusement that makes Bruce’s blood pound. “Spoken like a true researcher,” he replies, and something inside of Bruce screams because he has spent too long being a lab rat and lost too much being blamed for it and has gained nothing but this curse and relief of anger. 

Bruce locks it away, tucks it behind a face that can be friendly in any language and a smile that feels well worn but under Coulson’s stare is starting to fray. The familiar costume of a mild man with a surprise up his sleeve tatters and unravels under the inspection of a true expert, and Bruce swallows as Coulson puts his hands on the table. Swallows because it’s the middle of the night and no one else is within floors of them and Coulson’s eyes are too blue and too cold and too close. Swallows as Coulson leans forwards just enough to violate the boundary of that Bruce has painstakingly marked as his own with mugs of tea and papers and highlighters.

Coulson speaks soundlessly, but the force of the word vibrates Bruce’s very bones, takes every careful lie and calls it what it is and Coulson has no right, no right to judge when he is nothing but a ghost under all of his own careful construction.

_Smash_.

Coulson is against the wall with enough speed and enough force to knock the breath out of him. Bruce’s forearm pressed against his throat and the agent doesn’t twist or gasp or panic. Just stares and contemplates and waits for his lungs to reinflate of their own accord. There is professional curiosity and Bruce snarls in the face of it, bares his teeth and presses his weight and waits for the stink of fear that must be coming. 

They're the same height, but Bruce towers over Coulson. Pushes harder and crowds in closer and his skin feels tighter than ever with Colson staring up at him. With the even rhythm of a soft heartbeat and the harsh sound of Bruce’s own breathing.

No right at all.

“Do you have a death wish?” Bruce asks, words bubbling around an incredulous chuckle. “Did you draw the short straw and get sent to see how dangerous I really am?”

Coulson is looking at Bruce’s face, his eyes tracing over eyebrows and cheekbones and nose with a weight that feels like fingers and Bruce can feel the hairs at the back of his neck prickle.

“SHIELD is far less concerned with you than you seem to think,” Coulson replies, and Bruce barks out a laugh because there is nothing at all funny about the situation.

“You watch me,” he says in a voice that is all his own, no laughter and no lies and no anger. Just unsurprised bitterness and the taste of yellow and blue.

“Yes,” Coulson agrees, the line of his sight stroking across Bruce’s forehead, catching at the smudge of a fingerprint on Bruce’s glasses, a little print of oil and frustration and Bruce has never been able to keep his glasses with their scratches and their outdated prescription perfectly clean. “I watch you.”

He lifts a hand with unconcerned ease and pulls the glasses away, loses some of his definition because Bruce has spent so long watching the horizon that the sudden switch to near focus makes his eyes ache. Coulson folds the frames with one hand, the metal sounding thin and fragile, and then hooks them by one arm to the front of Bruce’s shirt, to the shirt that Tony had donated and that Bruce owns because Bruce never takes more with him than the clothes on his back and the items in his pockets. The urge to run is a pounding beat of feet on pavement in his bloodstream and Agent Coulson watches the way Bruce’s pulse leaps and steadies along his jugular. 

“And what do you expect to see?” Bruce asks. “Are you looking for the dog on a leash, or the foam at his mouth?”

Coulson’s hand on his arm makes Bruce jump, and he leans his weight into the heavy line of bone against Coulson’s throat, leans his weight into what little handle he has on the situation. He can be gone by dawn, he’s sure of it. If he can just get out of the tower-

“You,” Agent Coulson replies. A simple answer that leaves Bruce’s face frozen in a snarl, leaves his fingers cold and his palms clammy.

“I don’t...” he trails off, uncertain of how to end the sentence. Bruce doesn’t. That is what Bruce is, Bruce is defined by _does not_ and now with Coulson pinned against the wall it is Bruce who is cornered, composed of nervous energy and constricted by the binds of his bluffs.

Agent Coulson’s fingers are at Bruce’s jaw, just below his ear and spreading down the side of his neck. The stretch of a pointer finger feels cool against the underside of Bruce’s chin and the knuckle of Coulson’s thumb is a promising weight against Bruce’s throat.

Agent Coulson, with his back against the wall and the breath of the beast hot and damp at his neck, holding Bruce in place because that is how it has always been. It has always been Bruce Banner, the natural prey for faceless and replaceable men.

“You need to think outside the box, Doctor Banner,” Coulson says. His thumb strokes the vulnerability of Bruce’s Adam’s apple, a finger on the trigger. It is too early and too late for riddles in the dark, for Bruce to be blinking watering eyes and straining to focus on this wolf wearing a suit made of only the finest of sheep.

“The only box I care about,” Bruce says, his voice thready and unstable and everything Agent Coulson has pushed him to be, “is the one you’re going to try and stick me in once SHIELD stops pretending to trust me.”

There’s that crinkle again, that lines of amusement at a scenario devoid of humour and the press of Coulson’s thumb at Bruce’s throat asks his heart to beat faster. “Do you really think SHIELD trusts me?” he asks.

And Bruce had. Bruce had thought that Fury’s raven had been dragged from Death himself, had been placed close and quiet to keep everyone in line. Black eyes and fast hands and that special smile for Clint and Natasha, his pet field agents. What a perfect trio – murderers and thieves and liars, and all such nice people despite the emptiness that nothing can fill.

It’s only now that Bruce applies the lens of otherness. The Avengers Initiative is nothing but a storage facility of broken toys that are liable to take an eye out. 

Knives in backs and warm eyes made cold.

“Then I definitely shouldn’t trust you,” Bruce says, pressing closer. Nose to nose and Bruce’s hips pressed against the agent’s belt buckle. “If even SHIELD thinks you’re a risk.”

“Trust is meaningless without risk,” Coulson replies. 

“And risk is nothing but potential,” Bruce returns. “I’ve heard the spiel.” Pressed chest to chest, feet entangled and the taste of mingling breath slowing Bruce’s heart right down because it has been so long since such a thing has been familiar. He bares his teeth, presses his forearm hard enough to choke off a breath. “How’s this for potential?”

Coulson relaxes under him, soft and warm, his head tilting back and everything there for the taking. His voice is a sigh because Bruce isn’t giving him the room for anything stronger. “Good.” He presses his thumb against Bruce’s throat, so hard that it hurts to swallow, so hard that Bruce’s instinct is to lean away and the Other Guy’s instinct is to tear into it. “Good.”

Fight or flight is only half of the story. There are four ‘f’s to survival, and Bruce knows that each one marks a failure. Fight or flight or feed or...

Coulson’s body is warm, is unfairly predacious given the tightness of Bruce’s skin and the urges in his blood, urges that twist and demand and cajole as the smell of being close to someone crawls up Bruce’s nose and sets his brain alight. Bruce grinds his hip against that belt buckle, grinds the stirring within him against the surety of Coulson’s stance. Their mouths combined taste like lack of sleep. Like adrenaline burning and bad ideas. Like hard teeth and bitten lips and an unwillingness to back down.

Bruce doesn’t soften the line of his arm against Coulson’s throat as hips line up. He suspects that Coulson would be disappointed if he did. Coulson’s hand flexes over the lines and cords of Bruce’s windpipe as bodies grind together. It’s rough and it hurts and it’s the angry not-sex that Bruce has been craving for years. It’s legs that tangle and cocks that strain and bodies that want and take and steal and mark. It’s risk and potential, bruised mouths and harsh sounds. Heaving breaths and hands at throats, and Coulson’s release is as quiet as Bruce’s is loud, quiet except for the low growl the burn of Bruce’s climax drags out in response.

“You do have a death wish,” Bruce says, his voice thick and bemused and wrecked.

The hand at his throat eases, the simple line of force gone and replaced by warm fingertips, stroking at the tender skin of his neck. Straight, slow touches to soothe the savage beast. It’s intimate, the two of them pressed together with their foreheads touching and Coulson’s fingers sliding under the starched collar of Tony’s shirt to touch the sweat-sticky meat of a shoulder. It’s the scariest thing that has happened to Bruce in a long time.

“You’re not the threat you think you are,” Coulson replies. He meets Bruce’s gaze, even though they are too close for Bruce to focus. Even though Bruce’s nose is pressed to Coulson’s cheek and their eyelashes tangle at odd moments.

Phil Coulson. Scary dangerous terrible thing. A mess to be made and Bruce will make it, will unmake those that get in his path because modern monsters are made in his image and the green hands that itch beneath his palms only know how to grind the life out of obstacles.

Phil Coulson, who chases monsters and cheats death. Cold blue eyes to hide the fire in him that won’t go out, and the crackle of devouring flame is a familiar song in Bruce’s ears.

Bruce doesn’t want to run from this.


End file.
